Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles - Softcover

Davis, Margaret Leslie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 149763878X ISBN 13: 9781497638785

Publisher: Open Road Media, 2014

Synopsis

Rivers in the Desert is the quintessential American story. It follows the remarkable career of William Mulholland, the visionary who engineered the rise of Los Angeles as the greatest American city west of the Mississippi. He sought to transform the sparse and barren desert into an inhabitable environment by designing the longest aqueduct in the Western Hemisphere, bringing water from the mountains to support a large city. Davis chronicles Mulholland’s dramatic ascension to wealth and fame, followed by his tragic downfall after the sudden collapse of the dam he had constructed to safeguard the water supply. The disaster, which killed at least five hundred people, caused his repudiation by allies, friends, and a previously adoring community. Epic in scope, Rivers in the Desert chronicles the history of Los Angeles and examines the tragic fate of the man who rescued it.

About this title

From the Publisher:

West of the one hundredth meridian, moreover, this process of city-building through water-engineering remains an experiment curiously uncertain, given the millions and millions of Americans who today occupy these aqueduct cities. How long can such cities in the desert last, historians of cities, water, and engineering have begun to ask? And what have been the trade-offs and the costs? The asking of such questions must begin and end with Los Angeles. Hence the importance of the story of how Los Angeles invented itself through water engineering and the role played in that act of willful self actualization by William Mulholland. Beyond any other twentieth-century Los Angeleno, this self-taught engineer deserves the accolade and title Founder of the City. LikeLos Angeles itself, William Mulholland was at once the great and flawed product of his own imagination and will. Through self-study, he brought himself into being as an Engineer, and through engineering he played a pivotal, almost mythical, role in bringing modern Los Angeles into existence. In this splendid biography, Margaret Leslie Davis chronicles the fortunes and misfortunes ofthis titanic figure. As the first comprehensive biography of Mulholland, Rivers in the Desert is a welcomed contribution to the historiography of Los Angeles, to California history, and to the larger history of the nation. Rivers in the Desert also offers a case study of importance not only to Los Angeles, but to all cities in the American West as well that are based upon a vast scheme of water engineering. Ours is a civilization of triumphs and limits. Rivers in the Desert chronicles the light and the dark of city-building and, in so doing, offers valuable insights into the past, present, and possible future of all aqueduct-based cities in the arid, semi-arid, and ever-resistant American West.

About the Author:

Margaret L. Davis’s Rivers in the Desert: William Mulhollandand the Inventing of Los Angeles and Dark Side of Fortune both won the Golden Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Book. Davis is a graduate of Georgetown University and was formerly editor of arts and humanities at the Excite Network. Davis has a law degree and lives in Los Angeles, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 149763878X
• ISBN 13: 9781497638785
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268